“There is not a page in this first novel which does not prove that its author is a master storyteller.”
—Alan Bryce-Jones, New York Times Book Review
“Great, good, lavish, eerie fun…. The Magus is a stunner…. It is at once a pyrotechnical extravaganza, a wild, hilarious charade, a dynamo of suspense and horror, a profoundly serious probing into the nature of moral consciousness, a dizzying, electrifying chase through the labyrinth of the soul…. Read it in one sitting if possible—but read it.”
—Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times
“Dazzling…. audacious…. highly rewarding…. A remarkable, original work in which at least two visions operate simultaneously, the one Victorian and melodramatic, the other modern and wise. An outlandish achievement.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, Washington Post Book World
“A masterpiece of symbolically charged realism…. Fowles is the only writer in English who has the power, range, knowledge, and wisdom of a Tolstoy or James.”
—John Gardner, Saturday Review